


keep your secrets in the shadows (and you'll be sorry)

by aizensosuke



Category: Bleach
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Relationships, Character Study, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Married Life, Nightmares, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-10 18:07:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19511560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aizensosuke/pseuds/aizensosuke
Summary: orihime discovers the truth, contemplates life post-soul society, and loves her family. ichigo is the sword; she is the shield.





	keep your secrets in the shadows (and you'll be sorry)

Her palm stings with the force of the slap. Pain rings up her arm.

Urahara’s head snaps to the side with the force of the blow. Though she may not look it, Orihime is stronger than she used to be. She has to be to carry Kazui in her arms.

“Orihime-chan.” Urahara’s voice is tempered, is uncertain. “To what do I owe the—”

“You knew.” Her fingers quiver as she lowers her arm and she tightens them into a fist that quakes with righteous rage. She feels it hot in the pit of her stomach. “You  _ knew. _ ”

Sunlight fills the shop with a hazy afternoon glow and dust motes flutter lazily through the air around them. The day is a warm one; Kazui will play most of the day outside and be exhausted by the time she calls him in for dinner and to have a bath before bed.

Slowly, Urahara tilts his head toward her. The unnatural flush on his cheek is a bright, furious crimson in the shape of her fingers, and she can see the skin raising just slightly with the swelling. His pale grey eyes flicker with confusion, and then with understanding.

Acceptance is the last emotion she sees in his gaze. “So you found out the truth.”

She sets her purchases on the counter for him to ring up and takes a slow, deep breath. Her face is hot; anger is not an emotion she is used to. Everything else she knows, but this is new to her and she rolls her shoulder to ease the slight pull in her muscles away.

“If you ever put him in a position like that again, I will make you pay for it,” she says.

“Of course.” Urahara rings up her purchases, and she hands him her money. “Keep it.”

She debates, then pockets the bills. “It’s the least you can do,” she says as she leaves.

🏵️🏵️🏵️

She finds the soul ticket on Tatsuki’s dresser when she comes to visit her, tucked into the side of a photograph frame of her and Ichigo from childhood. “What is this?”

“The shinigami with the missing eye gave it to me once.” Tatsuki is digging through her closet in search of something she wanted to give Orihime, some present she tucked away just for her. “Said we could use it to visit Ichigo one day. I thought he was going to stay.”

“Why would he do that? Why would he ever want to stay?” The thought eats at the inside of her mind because Ichigo never said anything about not coming home to them.

In answer, Tatsuki shrugs before finding what she was looking for, thrusting the box out to Orihime. “Here it is! I told you I’d be able to find it.”

“Do you care if I take it, then?” Her eyes are still fixed on the ticket, on all of the meaning wrapped up into the small piece of paper. She does not want any of her friends touched by Soul Society after how much it took from them, how much it hurt them.

“Sure. I don’t mind. Consider it a second present.” Tatsuki plucks it out of the frame and hands it to her, and Orihime tucks it into the lining of her bra so she does not lose it.

On the way home, she turns it around and around in her fingers, folding it into a smaller piece and resolving to ask someone she feels like she can trust. There are so few people these days, but she needs to know the truth. She needs to know  _ why. _

If Kyoraku-san thought Ichigo would stay behind in Soul Society even though his home has always been here in the World of the Living, she wants to know. She meant it when she said at the altar that no matter what came after them next, she would protect Ichigo.

She says nothing about it to him when she arrives home, and he greets her with a kiss on the cheek. His lips are warm and soft against her skin, and she leans into him easily.

Kurosaki Ichigo. Her friend, her sword, the sun in her sky. Soul Society is not allowed to touch him again; Orihime made that decision long before they were ever married.

🏵️🏵️🏵️

“He wasn’t trained at the Royal Palace to beat Yhwach.” Kurosaki Isshin has his back to her when he tells her this, hands resting on the kitchen counter. “There was another reason.”

Ichigo took Kazui to pick up some groceries at the convenience store, just missing his father’s untimely arrival. Karin is off training with Urahara, Yuzu with her friends today.

Orihime stares at the ticket, lined with creases, resting on the kitchen table in front of her. The mug of tea in her hands has long since gone cold, but she cannot bring herself to take a single sip from it. “What was the other reason? Why would Tatsuki-chan need this?”

“I couldn’t let him suffer. Watching all of you fight when he couldn’t protect anyone, I just… I couldn’t. He was dying inside.” Isshin’s voice is tense and tight, and she can see his shoulders tense. “It has to be fate that he didn’t… That Yhwach replaced the Soul King—”

“Excuse me?” Orihime lifts her head. Her eyes are laser sharp on Isshin’s back and she moves without thinking, rising to her feet slowly, the chair scraping the tile floor. It is horribly loud in her ears, but she ignores it. “Why does being the Soul King matter?”

She already knows why Isshin brought this up. Why the conversation has gone this way. Why this  _ wretched _ answer has come. A part of her has always feared it since the moment she failed to stop the Soul King’s death, because Ichigo has always been too strong.

Isshin turns to look at her as she walks toward him, his eyes pleading with her.

In one smooth motion, she draws back her arm and smacks him across the face. It echoes.

“You should leave before he comes back,” she says. “How would you explain the slap?”

🏵️🏵️🏵️

One night, long before their marriage, before Kazui, and after the final battle, Ichigo shocks her awake with a shout of fearful panic and pain. It takes her a moment of fumbling in the dark to realize that he is having a nightmare, thrashing beneath the sheets. His skin is wet with sweat, and it  _ hurts _ to hear him beg and plead for everything to stop.

She wraps herself around him, and he startles awake in her arms. “I’ve got you. It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry. I woke you up.” But he squeezes her tight and tucks his face against her neck.

She remembers, at least vaguely, Tsukishima’s mind control. In bits and pieces and flashes, knowing that a chunk of her life was nearly destroyed by him. She remembers Ichigo breaking down in anguish, and she remembers how it rent her heart into pieces then.

It hurts just as much now as he clings to her and sobs, muffling his pain against her skin, his hands grasping at her back like he fears she may leave him here by himself.

“I’m here.” She runs her fingers through his hair and kisses his forehead. “You’re safe.”

After the final battle, Orihime studied. Medicine was never something that interested her, but she knew that trauma changed people. That it haunted them long after it was over, and Ichigo shakes and cries in her arms like there are monsters far larger and more powerful than him in the universe even though he stands at the pinnacle of strength.

“I’m going to keep you safe. No one is going to touch you again,” she whispers.

He looks up at her and his eyes are wet, tears smudged down his cheeks and clinging to his eyelashes, and she kisses him. Something small and gentle. He melts into her just the same and she wraps herself around him like the healing aura of her power, letting him hold her as close as he needs to. Thumbing away his tears and letting him bleed the pain out.

Soul Society is not allowed to call on him again. They are not allowed to touch him. Orihime swears it to herself in that moment when she sees only a fraction of the price he has paid.

🏵️🏵️🏵️

“You’re good for the King,” Shirosaki tells her once. “You help him in ways you don’t know.”

Part of living with Ichigo is living with Shirosaki and Zangetsu-ossan. They are as much a part of him as anything else, and Orihime values them both. She knows she can trust them with his safety and health. They were there for him in ways no one else could be.

They are a part of him, and as a result, Orihime loves them, too. They are pieces of his soul given a way to communicate with the world even though others want to deny it.

“I do my best. It’s all I can do.” And sometimes, Shirosaki talks to her like this. With Ichigo’s mouth and Ichigo’s voice, though it’s different when it’s him. So are the eyes.

Today is a quiet morning. Kazui is still in bed and breakfast is cooking on the stove, and Orihime has the table half-set when Shirosaki approaches her in the kitchen. And dutifully, she stands on her toes to give him a good morning kiss. She loves him, too.

There is a part of her that resonates with him near, and she remembers Chad explaining to her just what being a Fullbringer meant. That there was always an edge of Hollow inside of her, wrapped up in the core of her powers. She thinks it works for both of them.

“You’re good for me, too,” she says, and Shirosaki purrs as he noses into her hair.

🏵️🏵️🏵️

Ichigo has therapy sessions twice a month, and Orihime spends that two-hour period— an hour for the session, half an hour each way for commute— with Kazui. She helps with the clinic, and it pays the bills, so she has plenty of time to spend with her son.

No part of her will ever remember her parents, but she remembers Sora, his tender care and gentle ways. She listens to Kazui raptly when he talks to her, sometimes about nonsense and sometimes about important things. When he tells her about the ghosts and the monsters— the  _ hollows _ — Orihime gathers him up in her arms and kisses his cheek.

“What did Kassan tell you?” she asks him, always patient. He leans against her, curled up in her lap, content with letting her cuddle him close. Always an affectionate little boy.

“That you’ll always protect me no matter what happens.” Kazui looks at her with her own eyes beneath a fall of vibrant orange hair. “That no one and nothing can ever hurt me.”

“I mean it. I promised.” Orihime combs her fingers through his hair and tickles him just a little on the neck, and he giggles and squirms, and the solemness leaves his eyes.

When Ichigo comes home, Kazui runs right to him, and Orihime welcomes him with a kiss.

🏵️🏵️🏵️

“Kisuke thinks he knows everything,” Hiyori tells her one day over tea at her house. “But he never had a contingency plan for the Hogyoku, and I think about that sometimes.”

Orihime looks at her, eyebrows raised. “I never thought of it that way.”

She asked to come talk to her after visiting Urahara’s shop. She  _ needed _ to tell someone.

“He’s so smart. He’s a genius. I’m sure that if humanity knew the lengths he could go to when challenged, they’d be amazed. But they can’t.” Hiyori rolls her eyes and swirls a cinnamon stick in her tea. “What if something went wrong? Mistakes happen in science.”

Her voice is cagey and Orihime nods. She needs to let it out. “They do in this world, too.”

“Anyone could have been Hollowfied on accident. What if he did something wrong? What if he made a mistake? He fucks up all the time.” Hiyori huffs a breath and looks at her, and Orihime meets her eyes directly. “And he never came up with a way to undo it just in case.”

She gulps her tea and Orihime sips her own. It’s hot and strong and just what she needs right now despite the summer heat outside. “He’s… I think I hate him a little bit, actually.”

Hiyori laughs, and the sound is a comfort to her. “I don’t blame you. I’m not surprised, really, by anything you said. Of course he knew. Of course that bastard Isshin knew. And of course no one told him. Why would anyone give a shit if Ichigo got to decide his fate?”

“He came back and wanted to have a normal life. And I think all I really want right now is for him to have a real chance at that life,” Orihime says, her voice determined.

“The next time Urahara comes around, kick him,” Hiyori says. “You can say it was from me.”

🏵️🏵️🏵️

She touches him with a reverence reserved just for him. Her fingers and lips and tongue map out every centimeter of skin until he trembles beneath her, his lips half-forming her name before choking off in small gasps and moans he muffles against the pillow.

His skin is warm beneath her hand and unblemished. There are no scars to betray how hard he has fought because Orihime is flawless in her desire to keep him perfectly healed.

When he looks at her, his eyes are hazy with pleasure and desire, and he pulls her down against him, arching up against her body. Begging for skin-on-skin contact.

“Easy, Ichigo.” She cups his cheek and kisses him, and he makes small little noises against her mouth. When it’s her, when it’s like this, he lets himself be vulnerable.

“Orihime.” Her name has never sounded as sweet as it does when he pleads to her.

She knows him inside and out, and she has seen him laid bare and naked and with nothing to hide away, no shadows or corners or tough smiles. And she loves all of him. The brash confidence, the determination that surges through his veins, the way he smiles at her over the breakfast table while Kazui babbles on about a frog he saw outside in the yard.

“I love you.” He pulls her tighter to him and she kisses him deeper, and he mouths at her lips, at her throat, his hands splayed across her back, fingers callused and warm.

With practiced ease, she pins him beneath her once more and kisses him, and he falls against the mattress, arms over his head. “I love you, too,” she says. It sounds like a prayer.

🏵️🏵️🏵️

“I don’t blame you,” Uryu tells her when he comes to visit and after Kazui has disappeared into the living room with the present Uryu brought him. He looks tired, but work will do that to a person. “I’ve had to refer patients to therapists to deal with their trauma. It can cause insomnia, fatigue, depression, anxiety, weight loss, nightmares. It’s so awful.”

Chad nods from his side of the table; they came together. “He went through a lot, too.”

“More than any of us. He had to put his life on the line so many times and I don’t want him to have to do that anymore.” Orihime looks over Uryu’s shoulder; she can see Kazui taking apart the plastic medical kit Uryu brought him. “I want him to be able to raise Kazui.”

Uryu squeezes her hand in his own. “Make sure you stay around to raise him, too.”

“Soul Society couldn’t stop us when we were kids. They can’t stop us now.” Orihime smiles at him and Uryu chuckles, and Chad laughs softly and shakes his head. They were idiots.

The last seat at the table is taken up by Rukia, who looks so much older, so much more mature, even out of her captain’s haori. “I wouldn’t let them come near any of you. You went through so much just to save me and I owe you a debt of gratitude. And if this is how I can repay that debt, then we’ll keep the Royal Guard away from Ichigo for eternity.”

She puts her hand in the middle of the table, and they all pile theirs on top and look at each other, letting the moment settle on their shoulders. Letting their promise sink in.

When Ichigo returns home, his eyes light up when he sees everyone in the kitchen.

“Surprise!” Orihime throws her arms around his neck, and he laughs and embraces her.

🏵️🏵️🏵️

When Orihime opens her eyes in the morning, she sees his face across from hers.

Kazui is tucked securely between them and Ichigo’s chin is resting on top of his head, one of his arms wrapped firmly around their son’s back to keep him close. He’d come to join them after a bad dream, or so he said. Orihime shot the hollow from her bedroom window.

Without him facing her, he looks just like Ichigo. Two peas in a pod, father like son.

She knows the risks, of course. If Kazui is anything as powerful as Ichigo was so naturally, she has  _ two _ people to protect. She can. She will. Tsubaki has never felt as powerful in her hands, and he seems happy to be able to work with her once again in such an active role.

If the Royal Guard comes for either of them, Orihime will protect her husband and son.

When she was only a child in Hueco Mundo, she thought she could reject the Hogyoku out of existence if she ever had the chance. Maybe she can do more. Her power is divine, according to Aizen Sosuke. Limitless. Beyond any form of human understanding.

She will use all of the tools at her disposal to keep Ichigo and Kazui safe, and she will stay by their sides through it all. Nothing could ever separate her from the two of them.

When Ichigo opens his eyes, she leans over to kiss him on the nose, and she can hear the soft, huffy sound of his throaty morning laughter. “Good morning, Ichigo. I love you.”

**Author's Note:**

> urahara and isshin deserved to have the ever-loving shit slapped out of them don't @ me


End file.
